


her and you

by orphan_account



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Childhood Friends, Coping, I'm Sorry, Nonbinary Character, Other, POV Second Person, Personal Growth, Self-Discovery, Suicidal Thoughts, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:02:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27727853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: my life story framed through how i feel about my best friend
Kudos: 1





	her and you

You were too young to remember the first time you met, but your parents tell you the two of you hit off immediately and she's been there as long as you can remember.

Your first memory that you still remember to this day is a windy day in autumn. You went on a walk with her and her dad, and the wind made tornados of the fallen leaves as you exited the apartment building. The leaves matched your bright red coat.

Most of your early childhood is a blur now, but you distinctly remember trying as best as you could as a five year old to keep in contact with her when you moved away. Neither of you were very good at video calls, and you didn't speak for almost two years. You made a new friend though, and they brought you into their friend group. The shirt and bracelet they gave are still somewhere in your belongings.

You move back. She tackles you in a hug when you two see each other again.

Her mother is a seamstress and she asks the two of you to model some of her accessories one early morning when you're over for a sleepover. It's cold outside and frost covers the ivy leaves that you two sit among. Your hands are red and freezing, and your shoes are soaking wet, by the time she's done taking pictures, but the leaves around you are green again. Her hands and shoes are in the same state.

It's unclear to you when she first invited you to go with her to her church, but it's long and boring. You spend the whole time doodling on the weird long notepads, and writing out little stories with her in whispers. The adults around you two shake their heads. You don't especially _like_ going to church, but you accept any time she invites you.

Sleepovers begin to happen almost every week. The two of you stay up late piling her family's couch/bed with blankets and pillows, and fall asleep in the middle of what ever movie you two put on. You have pancakes for breakfast almost every time, but her family uses weird syrup so you smother yours with butter. When you get older the two of you start making popcorn and falling asleep after two or three movies. The pancakes remain the same though.

You're in second grade when she invites you on a camping trip with her family. You weren't told about the cabin, so you bring your sleeping bag and pad, and her younger sister giggles at you. You stick out your tongue at her, and you share on of the top bunks with your best friend. The next day the two of you find a mini waterfall hidden by foliage and declare it your hideout while you're on the trip. You find a cluster of frog eggs, and she makes a shoddy sand castle. After all, the two of you don't spend much time on the beach.

In third grade you go on a backpacking trip with another friend and his sister. You try and make smokesticks with his sister like you do with your best friend, but their dad stops you and you don't get to see if you can make chalk like your brother. Sleeping in the tent with your friend's sister feels weird and cold, and you bury your head in your sleeping bag all night long.

When you get back from the trip you have a sleepover with your best friend in her backyard, and she declares that the inside of your sleeping bag (previously your older brother's) smells like water and emptiness, just like you. Her sleeping bag is bigger because she's older, and the inside is a warm fluffy thing, so you press the outside of your sleeping bag against it that night, as if it could heat up the plasticky, bug-patterned, inside of your own.

It's fourth grade when both of your families take a camping trip together, and her mother french braids your hair because it's finally long enough. There's a river nearby the campsite and the two of you try to skip rocks. She asks you if you have a crush on anyone, and something clicks. You tell her you do, and when she asks who you lie and say a name of a random girl in your class. She asks if you're bi, but you don't know what that means yet, so you simply shrug. When you go back across the river to get yourself more rocks, you stare at her for a bit, and 'Kiss the Girl' from the Little Mermaid gets stuck in your head, but that song's for girls and _boys_. Not girls and girls.

In fifth grade you start feeling worse. Your old school gets torn down, and weird thoughts start to go through your head. One evening you pop the screen out of your first-floor window and walk around your backyard as you listen to music. The thought that you could wrap your headphone cord around your neck and tie it to one of the branches in your backyard tree springs into your mind. It scares you.  
A week later you tell your mother in the car outside your house when the rest of your family is inside, and you start going to therapy. Your diagnosed with anxiety and depression.

Once therapy starts, you don't see her as much, but she's in middle school now, so you assume she's just busy. Your therapist asks you to make a chart detailing what things would make you more and less stressed, and you almost put her on the chart. You decide not to though, and simply let your therapist suggest things to you.

When you enter middle school, you chop your hair short and dye it purple. Her favourite colour is purple, and she says it's cool. Her hair is still long though, and you braid it when you sit next to her in church.  
You keep dying your hair for the rest of middle school.

When you're halfway through sixth grade your parents give you a phone. You have to take the city bus to and from your school now, and they want you to be able to contact them if you're anxious or if they need you for something. Your school gives everyone in your grade a computer, and you use it to fnd out what 'bi' means. You're suddenly thrown into the relm of labels, but it makes you more comfortable when you learn you can like girls, and you didn't have to find the kiss on the cheek Paul gave you back in third grade.  
Someone on the site you're using refers to you as 'they' and it brings you more joy than you could imagine. You try your best to ignore the pit that's now growing in your stomach everytime someone calls you she.

There's a cute girl in your orchestra class, and you slowly befriend her through theatre club. You become better friends with another girl in her friend group, but you don't mind much. She's nicer than orchestra girl, and you think the things she draws are cute. You try your best to ignore the fact that she looks like your best friend, and cheer her on when she asks out another one of your friends (a boy in your math class) with a comic. The days of them hesitantly asking you about each other are finally over.

You realize you're pan, not bi, and you tell your best friend that one cold night on the roof of her church while the dance you two were there for happens below. She says that _she's_ bi, and the part of you you've deeply buried leaps with joy. You technically have a chance.

By seventh grade, your friends from school have broken up, and they aren't talking anymore. He says that she broke up with him over text, and she says she had no other way of doing it. You stick with her, but he still talks with you sometimes. You notice that he's cut his hair short, and the principal doesn't call his "miss" anymore.  
Your school friend asks you out in the middle of the year, and you say yes. You've harbored a bit of a crush on her after all. But it only lasts two weeks, and the whole time you feel guilty and sad. You text your best friend frequently, and start talking to your school friend less and less. Eventually your school friend finally breaks the two of you up, and you start talking more and more again. You don't talk about it, and you know in your heart that you don't really have a crush on anyone other than your best friend.

You come out as non-binary on National Coming Out Day that year to your school friends and family, and your mother gives you the old pride flag she bought back in 1980 something to be an ally to her gay friends. You're relieved that she and your dad don't care, and they start calling you by your proper pronouns.  
You tell your best friend next, trying your best to pretend that her school friend's aren't in the room with you two, and she hugs you tightly and lifts you off the ground. That sleepover you lie and tell her that you used to have a crush on her, and she says the same thing. You missed your chance and the thought weighs heavy on you the rest of the week once you leave her house.

You start playing in a D&D group with your old friends, DM'd by your dad, and when your school friend and her brother join, you try your best to not wish that she was your best friend.

Eighth grade you and your best friend don't talk less, but you don't talk more. You keep going to church with her, and you go the Father Daughter dance that year too. Only this year you wear a dress shirt and a bowtie and not one of her old dresses, and your hair is cropped short and bright red, not long and brown. The little girls there stare at you, but you simply squeeze your best friend's hand tight. That night when decorating your dance pictures with your dad, you scribble out the 'Daughter' part of the card and write 'not son'.

You invite your best friend to come see your show, and you give her one of the roses you got from your other friend's mother after you're done cleaning up backstage. She hugs you and lifts you into the air again, careful not to crush the rose, and you bury your face into her shoulder and silently wish that the roses could have had a more romantic meaning. When you go over to her house week later you find the rose sitting in a vase in her desk and she says she's planning on pressing is once it starts to wither.

You invite her to your next show, a play this time and not a musical, but COVID hits before she can, and you resort to texting her.

You've only been over to her house a handful of times since then, and you miss her.

You ask her sleep-deprivation cranked up to it's fullest one night how she'd feel if you had a crush on her. You freak out and send a billion other texts after that before she even wakes up, and she assures you it's ok.  
It takes you a few weeks to get used to sending hearts and "I love yous" back and forth after that.

With your masks, she can't kiss your cheeks to say goodbye like she used to, but you make do.

It hurts sometimes telling her "I love you" when every time she says it you know she means it platonically, but you pretend it doesn't and she doesn't.

And you cope.


End file.
